Justin Trudeau Has Some Explaining To Do

A search warrant requires more info than the feds provided when they invoked the last resort Emergencies Act.

According to two organizations that represent Canadian defence lawyers, a police officer seeking a search warrant has to explain himself more fully than did Canada’s federal government when it invoked the Emergencies Act last February.

Because profoundly anti-democratic powers are involved, a parliamentary committee must examine events afterward, and an independent inquiry must also be held. In other words, built into the law is an expectation that the government will explain itself to the satisfaction of the wider community.

These lawyers say it’s clear the Emergencies Act needs to demand more detailed information from the politicians who choose to wield it. In paragraph 60 of their Closing Submission, they write:

to obtain a search warrant, a police officer must present a justice of the peace
with an affidavit that sets out that officer’s reasonable grounds to believe that there will be evidence in the particular place named in the warrant…Later, at trial, the
defendant can challenge the basis for the search by challenging the validity of the warrant…The reviewing court is able to closely scrutinize whether the police had reasonable and probable grounds to conduct the search based on what was included in the affidavit. Officers have a duty to be full, frank, and fair… [italics added]

The lawyers say the government should be required to “prepare a more complete written record” that explains what “information it considered” and what other attempts were made to resolve the situation before this extraordinary legislation is invoked.

It isn’t good enough, they say, for the federal Cabinet “to believe that a public order emergency exists. That belief must be justified.” Which means a full record of the government’s reasoning must be created at the time and then made public.